It’s not nice to tease you, talking about the Lost Roo before she’s solidly open.  But I just couldn’t wait to show you the fun things Roo Keepers Mark and Helen Johnson have been working on.  Helen put a lot of detail focus on getting her logo roos just right and her perseverence has paid off.  You can see these increasingly familiar forms atop the silo on the building now and they’re starting to pop up amongst the rocks in the yard.  Once inside you’ll find these happy hoppers most everywhere–if you look closely!

Mark and Helen are quite smart about their branding and identity development and it has been an absolute joy to work with them on a variety of branding projects as they’ve prepared the restaurant for opening.  Wendy and I can honestly say we’ve never made 8-foot roo patterns before.  Stay tuned; our web hounds will be giving you a peek at the newly designed Lost Roo website any day now.

~Keleigh

Menus usually pose the challenge of putting a lot of information into a comparatively small amount of space.  Menus should be easy to read by all ages in mood lighting and most restaurant owners want to include a fair number of graphics and images, as well as use an interesting font or two.   As a designer, I want to create lots of space for the eye to rest, and keep consistency of brand.  The challenge compounds when a restaurateur needs to be able to edit the final product themselves, meaning I need to use a tool like Word instead of professional page layout software.  It’s not always an easy puzzle, but it’s usually fun!

Don Shaw of Don’s Portside Cafe and the Loose Kaboose is easy to work with because he gives quite a bit of freedom to design once he dictates the page count and provides the text.    By putting me in charge of more elements of the puzzle, Don saves money because we go through fewer revisions.  His full-size menus came out very readable and engaging this year!  The take-out menu is half the size of what you read in the restaurants, which makes it affordable to get it in the hands of the many visitors to our beach without losing integrity of design.

This site started its life as a template.  We changed the header to include the Willapa Harbor Helping Hands logo and made a flower out of the cancer ribbon.  We also adjusted the page templates a bit to accommodate presenting the WHHH material well.  Beyond that, building the site was as simple as creating web site text out of existing print materials, finding some appropriate stock photography, and putting it all together.  A final pass to do some light search engine optimization and we were ready to launch.

Another of Keleigh’s “working too late brainstorms”, this site was knocked out in a couple of hours after Keleigh received an email from Cathy saying she was running for County Commissioner.  The look and feel came from a “theme”, a WordPress template, and the text and photos came from the email from Cathy.  It’s grown a bit since, as the campaign team has added their magic, but is a great example of how a good-looking site doesn’t have to take a lot of time & money to get started, or web experience to grow and change.

Tides West Community Association worked with Karl to customize a theme and make it their own.  The end result bears little resemblance to the original theme; the function and spatial layout of the theme remain.  This made it quick (read “inexpensive”) for Karl to develop a full-featured site for the group that they could maintain on their own –without breaking their bank.

It sure looks like a custom site, doesn’t it?  Look closer.  Keleigh drew the logo based on font specification and design concept from the site owner, and also turned it into a background tile.  Karl chose a theme with the appropriate color palette and function, added the text and images from the client, give him a brief tutorial on WordPress by phone, and whoosh!  A site was born on a tight budget.

Sort of a funny title, isn’t it?  We wanted to show you the diversity of projects we’ve been working on lately.

The Breakers hotel in Long Beach has been doing a lot of remodeling over the past several years and we were able to give them custom door plates to match their clean look.  Engraved plastic is actually pretty inexpensive, whether you need key fobs, name badges, door plates like these, or larger signs.  We can get most colors of plastic and turnaround is only about a week once you approve the art.  Stop by and browse samples!

The Breakers also ordered some custom pens recently for a special campaign.  They turned out really well, and match the specs we were given about as perfectly as one could hope.  Even better, we found a pen that met the specs at a really great price.

Don’t you just love happy endings?

This project is a great example of how quickly we can get things done when everyone does their homework promptly.  We met with Terri on a Tuesday and Blair had her site all but finished Thursday afternoon.  Terri still needed to send us some text and photos, which she did, and that same day, the site was ready to go live.

Our team has plans for improvements down the road, but the Park was able to get their online presence going before the busy summer season made it impossible for Terri to even think about planning a website.  And it was super-affordable, to boot!

Meanwhile, Keleigh re-drew the Park’s logo, as the original art had been lost and they were also in need of some business cards.  Bundling this project with the website made it easy for us to create all the logo art files at once, which made it less expensive for the Park.

Congratulations on your new site, CranberryRVPark.com!